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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22417960">Assault on the Senses</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi'>okapi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hurt/Comfort, John Whump, M/M, Senses, Sherlock Holmes on a Case</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:16:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22417960</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson begins to sense the finely dressed women of Marylebone are trying to kill him. </p><p>Watson Whump.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>76</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Taste</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the DW inspiring tables 50 prompts table, prompts 1-5 [Taste, Sight, Smell, Hear, Touch].</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Watson meets a old lady on an omnibus. <b>Warning for mentions of vomiting.</b></p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is universally acknowledged that a crowded omnibus on any given afternoon is in want of a passenger of the female persuasion in an outrageous hat, and the one that was carrying me back to Baker Street on Monday was no exception.</p><p>The lady sported the curved back of the very old and leaned on a stalwart stick. One suspected she had gnarled, spotted hands in her fine gloves and a slight frame buried beneath her elegant great coat, but I confess I did not spare too much thought for her gloves or her coat or even her face, which was obscured by a veil. What I noticed, what everyone in the ‘bus could not help but notice, was her hat.</p><p>Her hat was a black and yellow affair with a long spray of curious yellow feathers extending horizontally well past her head.</p><p>I don’t know the colour, style, or effect of the lady’s frock, but her crown proclaimed her to be a queen bee, and, being ever the gentleman as well as a drone, I rose and offered her my seat.</p><p>She gave a minute but gracious nod and slipped into the space, patting the seat for me to take my place next to her. This was easier invited than accepted, in part, because of inadequate room afforded to my regimental posterior, but mostly because of her hat.</p><p>I decided it would be rude to refuse, and as there was only a short distance more to Baker Street, I would suffer. And suffer I did, little knowing at the time how great that suffering was to be.</p><p>The yellow feathers had the tenacity of hungry bees, and my moustache, nose, and eyes were, apparently, like a bouquet of spring blossoms promising the sweetest nectar known. Whichever way I turned my head, the lady turned hers in a mirrored fashion, and so, even as I tried valiantly to escape them, the tips of the feathers found my face, poking me, tickling me, and, in general, making a soft, relentless, and wholly unwanted assault on my two masks of civility and chivalry.</p><p>The distance to Baker Street, I swiftly discovered, was not short. Not short at all!</p><p>Some of the other passengers shot looks at me, pity for my state mingled with relief that it was I bearing the brunt of the hat and not them.</p><p>Finally, I decided to speak to the lady, conjecturing if we were facing each other in conversation, the hat would be pointing in a different direction. I opened my mouth to make some remark about the weather or the traffic when—</p><p>“Mmphf!”</p><p>The end of the feathers landed directly between my parted lips. Instinctively, I closed my mouth at the intrusion, but just as I did so, the lady jerked her head sharply toward the window, and I found I had a feather, or at least, a substantial piece of one, between my teeth.</p><p>The lady was gazing intently at something in the street, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her hat had been viciously preened by a stranger on an omnibus.</p><p>What could I do?</p><p>I swallowed and alit at once and walked the rest of the distance home.</p><p>The texture of the feather had been very odd. Not entirely smooth but not coarse, either. The flavour didn’t even register in my thoughts because, instantly sodden by the prodigious amount of saliva in my mouth, which was, no doubt, a result of my constant agitation, it went down like a slippery bit of peel.</p><p>I thought no more about the old lady on the omnibus or her hat until much later that evening when I was staring into the chamber pot at what must have been, amongst the other unmentionables, threads of yellow feather.</p><p>I had, to put it bluntly, vomited my supper. I went on to vomit my lunch, breakfast, and, or so it seemed in the early hours of the morning, every meal I had ever eaten in a long, wasted lifetime.</p><p>And with every heave, even in the later hours, when all knowledge of anatomy and physiology would’ve declared my stomach to have been emptied of its entire contents thrice over, there appeared a bit more of the deuce of that yellow feather!</p><p>I had no wish to trouble Holmes about my state. He had just begun an investigation, the details of which he had yet to reveal to me. However, once it was made apparent that my gastrointestinal revolt was to be of the long-standing siege variety, I knew I required a helpmeet, and so I took Mrs. Hudson into my confidence, and she transformed at once into a kind of beatified Florence Nightingale with perhaps just a touch of Attila the Hun.</p><p>And so, I survived the night.</p><p>Mrs. Hudson must have alerted Holmes to my condition, but his expression of concern turned to downright alarm when I appeared at the breakfast table the following morning.</p><p>I knew I was doing my best impression of the spectre at the feast as I lowered myself gingerly into my chair, but I tried a dismissive wave of the hand, nonetheless.</p><p>Mrs. Hudson sailed in and placed a mug of beef broth before me with a stern admonishment that I was not to partake of Holmes’s eggs and bacon.</p><p>There was no danger of that. Food held no appeal. Indeed, in that moment, I could’ve dispensed with the sense of taste altogether.</p><p>Holmes made gentle inquiries, and I responded with the story of the old lady in the hat.</p><p>It is difficult to surprise the great Sherlock Holmes but surprise him I did.</p><p>He looked downright flabbergasted.</p><p>“Swallowing a feather did all that?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Dear me.”</p><p>I cannot read people as well as Holmes can, but I did recognise before me the face of a man who is reconsidering his day’s plans.</p><p>“Go,” I said. “I’m going nap on the sofa and recover my strength—”</p><p>“And take your medicine,” said Mrs. Hudson.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Sight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Watson is perilously distracted by a lady in blue.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“How’s the dog?” I asked weakly, without opening my eyes.</p><p>Out of the cotton wool ether, Holmes’s disembodied voice answered,</p><p>“I am certain the dog, wherever it is, is fine. It was your head, Watson, that connected with the pavement.”</p><p>Despite his soft tone, Holmes’s words rang like stalwart church bells in the belfry of my skull, overwhelming me with their vibrations and their noise. I tried to escape them by turning my head, but that only caused the throbbing at my left temple to sharpen to a bright stabbing pain.</p><p>I cried out and stilled myself, hoping the assault would pass.</p><p>When the pain had dulled to an ache, I cast my mind back to earlier events in the day, the ones which had led me to wake, extended on the sofa in Baker Street—for I was certain that was where I was—with a concerned Holmes—for I was just as certain that was what he was—looming over me.</p><p>I did remember the pavement rising to greet me. Or was it I who bowed to it?</p><p>Surely the latter and rather an unceremonious gesture at that.</p><p>Then I remember <em>her</em>.</p><p>“She was a vision,” I murmured, conscious, even in that moment, of playing a role in a two-bit pantomime. “An absolute vision.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“The lady in blue.”</p><p>“Watson, according to the Good Samaritans who brought you home, both of whom, by the way, dressed in less-than-visionary dark grey, you were almost trampled by a cart when you stepped into the street by Regent’s Park. They did not mention a lady in blue, nor, I am sorry to say, has one arrived inquiring as to your wellbeing.” He sighed. “Now, as far as I can tell, the worst of the damage is here.”</p><p>I shrieked at the cold dab to my temple.</p><p>“Just cleaning the wound,” soothed Holmes. “Interesting this. Our roles reversed. It’s usually you who is patching me up.”</p><p>I grunted.</p><p>“So, who was she?” continued Holmes as he applied a bandage. “The lady in blue?”</p><p>“I don’t know. She was exiting the park with her dog just as I was arriving. She was tall with an elegant profile. Her hat and scarf obscured most of her face. But what I noticed most was her dress. She wore a voluminous fur, well, I suppose you’d call it a ‘stole,’ but peeking out at the sleeves and the hem and the collar was this beautiful, really exquisite, cerulean dia…diaphan…oh.”</p><p>The word wriggled triumphantly away like a fish that had slipped off my mind’s hook.</p><p>“Diaphanous?” suggested Holmes, but I barely heard him.</p><p>“Like a mist, you know, the frock,” I persisted. “I saw her, she didn’t see me, then her terrier snapped the lead.”</p><p>“The little scoundrel,” muttered Holmes.</p><p>“And so, I went for the dog to, you know, catch it before something happened to it.”</p><p>“Meanwhile, something happened to you.”</p><p>“I suppose so.” I thought back. Pieces of memory began to surface. “I saw the cart and the driver. I think the driver saw me, too.”</p><p>“Yes, he was one of the two who brought you here. He was overflowing with contrition and concern.”</p><p>“It was all my fault, of course. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she distracted him, too. The siren in blue.”</p><p>“Sirens sing, Watson.”</p><p>“True,” I hummed. “She wasn’t singing. She was no doubt off to her dressmakers. Or the opera.”</p><p>“It seems the injury to your head hasn’t damaged your robust imagination. I suppose I should take it as a sign that at least some parts of your brain are still in working order. Though I question your judgment, my good man, I really do.” I heard him packing up the first aid supplies. “I don’t understand why you were on your way to Regent’s Park in the first place. I thought that you said, no, that you swore to Mrs. Hudson, and myself, the latter being, of course, a much lesser oath compared to the former, that you were going to stay in and recover from last night’s illness. I wouldn’t have gone out to work on the case if you hadn’t insisted. I could’ve accompanied you, been there to shield you from the siren’s temptation.”</p><p>His voice trailed off at the end, but the genuine regret was unmistakable. My heart was moved.</p><p>“Don’t worry yourself, Holmes. That was the plan, but Mrs. Hudson’s restoratives, I really don’t know what she puts in those tisanes of hers, were nothing short of miraculous. I had a nap, and by the afternoon, I felt like a bit of fresh air. And Bessie was keen to air the rooms out or something. So, with permission, I decided just to go for a quick stroll around the park. Nothing more. Fill the lungs with what passes for fresh air in this metropolis and stretch my muscles a bit.”</p><p>Holmes harrumphed. Then he asked,</p><p>“What else can I get you?”</p><p>I considered my head. “I have a few remaining powders in my bag,” I went on to describe them, “one of those in water should do me.”</p><p>I felt the sudden removal of the warm weight which had been pressed against my side, and I used the intervening minutes, the ones in which Holmes was employed finding and prepare the treatment, to work at opening my eyes.</p><p>My cones and rods adjusted to the influx of light, and when I could finally see again, I saw Holmes.</p><p>“You are a vision, too,” I said.</p><p>“But not in diaphanous sapphire.”</p><p>“No,” I agreed.</p><p>I smiled as he approached with the glass of water, concern still engraved on his features.</p><p>“Don’t worry, Holmes,” I repeated. “I’ll be quite all right. An old solider like me cannot be felled by a bit of yellow feather or a gauzy blue dress, though, I suppose, the latter can turn my head.”</p><p>“And the former your stomach,” added Holmes. He raised his own glass and he handed me mine.</p><p>“To your good health, Watson.”</p><p>“To yours.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Smell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Watson has an very unfortunate incident on the way home from the chemist's.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I had no intention of getting into any more trouble and wouldn’t have if not for an unfortunate concatenation of circumstance.</p>
<p>On the morning following the incident of ‘the lady in blue,’ I dozed by the fire and pretended to read the papers, keeping the worst of the pain away with a regular dosing of medicine, specifically more of the powders which I had instructed Holmes to give me the previous evening.</p>
<p>I solemnly promised Holmes that I would not vacate our residence for the whole of the day, and thus assured, in the afternoon, he went out on business related to his new case, of which I was still in the dark. Mrs. Hudson, too, left on some errands. I must say that she and Bessie had outdone themselves making a perfect paradise of the sitting room from which few would have wanted to stir, down to a vase of sweet winter flowers on the table, exhaling their delicate fragrance all the way to my appreciative, convalescing nose.</p>
<p>As such things often happen, it was when I was alone that I noticed that I had exhausted my supply of powders.</p>
<p>I suppose I could’ve sent a messenger for them, but that seemed like sloth. I wasn’t an invalid after all, not really. And the chemist’s shop was not that far away. And I thought it might do me a world of good to have a wash and a shave and to put on some clean clothes and go out for a very short stroll with a very specific aim. I knew exactly what I needed and where to find it. And it would only take a few minutes, I reassured myself. I would be back long before Mrs. Hudson and Holmes returned and be the much better for it.</p>
<p>Truly, it seemed like the ideal plan with absolutely no chance of calamity.</p>
<p>What I didn’t count on was the nearest chemist’s shop being closed when I arrived. Thus, I was forced to walk farther to another, the next closest one being some streets away, tucked between a perfumer’s and a fine dressmaker’s establishment.</p>
<p>Finally, however, I made my purchase and, laden with my trove, turned to leave.</p>
<p>And who should pass by the window but the lady in blue?</p>
<p>I started.</p>
<p>Upon reaching the pavement, I reconsidered my initial assessment for two very important reasons. First, though my glance had been brief, I hadn’t noticed any terrier, and secondly, she was now wearing a severe green frock, equally becoming to her swaying poplar frame but in a style the very opposite of diaphanous.</p>
<p>I caught sight of her back and made a noise of recognition and immediately realised how foolish it was to make a noise at the back of an unknown woman in the street. Really, almost caddish!</p>
<p>The lady did not turn around but rather ducked quickly into the perfumer’s shop.         </p>
<p>Slowly, slowly, slowly, or so it seemed with late afternoon London swirling about me, I moved toward the shop door and opened it.</p>
<p>The jangle of the bell woke me from my stupor, and I immediately took stock of just how ridiculous I was behaving when I heard a loud, impatient noise that seemed to be directed at me. I looked over my shoulder to discover a woman of uncertain age behind me, glaring, evidently waiting for me to vacate the threshold so that she could pass inside to the shop.</p>
<p>To let her pass, which I did, with an apologetic smile, I had to step inside and towards the lady in green, who was speaking to the shop assistant behind the counter in a soft, husky voice, a bottle with a round atomizer resting on the glass between them.</p>
<p>“…I can’t really smell anything…a stronger sample, perhaps…no, no…here, may I? OH! Oh, I am sorry!”</p>
<p>I was assaulted by a caustic cloud. An attack by a swarm of bees could not have produced a more violent reaction.</p>
<p>“ARGH!”</p>
<p>My hands flew to my stinging eyes, and I toddled round in a circle. I heard the jangle of the bell and, sensing an escape in the rush of cool air, fled through the open door, hurling myself out into the street.</p>
<p>My face was on fire, and when I breathed, gasped, really, all I could smell was flowers, that hideously cloying scent.</p>
<p>Clumsily, I weaved my way through the crowd, partly deranged by the fragrance which seemed to cling with bulldog tenacity to the interior of my nostrils, all the way to Baker Street.</p>
<p>As I journeyed, I alternated between wondering what bed of Satan’s garden had grown flora capable of producing such a poison and cursing the bees that ever pollinated it. Puzzling about it and swearing vociferously distracted me somewhat from the intense burning and ominous pressure building in my cheeks and chin and forehead. Naturally, tears began to stream, and I must have looked a perfect fright, like a child who has been set upon by bullies running home to Mummy, crying. But in my case, the bully was some eau de something awful! Awful!</p>
<p>I have always considered my good landlady to be wholly unflappable, but when I appeared in the entrance way of 221 Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson took one look at my face and most definitely flapped.</p>
<p>“Doctor!” she exclaimed, a hand going to her breast involuntarily.</p>
<p>By a stroke of wisdom, or madness, difficult to say in that state, the name of the flower hit me just at that moment.</p>
<p>“Hyacinth!” I cried and collapsed into Mrs. Hudson’s outstretched arms.</p>
<p>A specialist was sent for at once and Mrs. Hudson, after ensconcing me in the sofa, set about preparing some treatments, unguents and poultices and whatnot.</p>
<p>By what means I don’t know, but I could still smell the damned hyacinth, and when Holmes arrived, my condition grew worse, and I descended into what could only be called ‘fits.’</p>
<p>So, then, of course, came the laudanum, and I sort of floated in a blissfully scentless cloud into the following day.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Hearing.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Watson sneaks out to go to church. Nothing bad can happen to him there, right?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They thought I was asleep.</p><p>And I was. At first.</p><p>It was just turning dusk when I heard Holmes slip out, closing the front door gently behind him.</p><p>Mrs. Hudson, bless her, retired early with a portion of gin; I heard the contents of a bottle sloshing generously into a glass. She was, no doubt, exhausted from adding to her already formidable list of daily tasks the application of the treatments prescribed by the specialist (as well as those prescribed by her own common sense) to my exterior as well as foisting an additional set of treatments on my interior and sprinkling harsh remonstrances, sage counsel, and dire warnings intermittently about my person.</p><p>My activities that day (sleeping and pretending to sleep and listening to Holmes playing alternately soothing, melancholy, and almost, if my ears did not deceive me, apologetic melodies on his violin) afforded ample time for reflection. Looking back on the misadventures of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I had to conclude that, somehow, I had, in ancient and Old Testament fashion, managed to anger Providence and was being punished.</p><p>Plagued. Tormented.</p><p>As the minutes ticked by, this thought began to gain form and substance and spurred deep inside me an urgency of action. I resolved not just to lament my fate but to do something about it.</p><p>I crept quietly about, readying myself as best I could. I didn’t bother washing or shaving, I simply added trousers and boots to my sickbed nightshirt and exchanged my dressing gown for a coat and hat and muffler, the last of which hid my recovering countenance well.</p><p>Then I, too, like Holmes of earlier, crept out the door as quiet as a mouse.</p><p>Seeking to make amends, I went straight to church.</p><p>An evening service was about to conclude. I remained in the pew, my head bowed, as people left. When the place was almost empty, I moved closer to the front.</p><p>As I slid onto the pew, I started.</p><p>Was that the old queen bee from the omnibus a few rows in front of me?</p><p>The coat and stick looked familiar, the posture, too. The hat was dark, but it bore on the front an outrageous, from what I could see, cascade of pink hydrangea. They might have been butterflies. It was difficult to tell when I wasn’t in chomping distance.</p><p>There was only one other person in the pews, and I could see at a brief glance, he was a wrong ‘un. Mangy coat, furtive expression, and sharp muzzle. He looked like the kind of cur that bites first and asks questions later.</p><p>Well, I thought, aware of my own myopia and prejudices surfacing, perhaps he was praying for forgiveness for his transgressions and the strength to refrain from further wrongdoing. After all, that was my purpose, too.</p><p>I closed my eyes and set about my entreaties.  </p><p>A few moments later, I was alerted to a shuffling. The old lady was getting to her unsteady feet and taking up her handbag and turning. She was visibly startled when she looked toward the cur and me. No doubt the man’s appearance was more unsettling to her than it was to me.</p><p>Then, the old lady began, with what I thought was probably uncharacteristic speed for someone of her age, to make her way along the pew and across the aisle and another set of pews towards a side chapel.</p><p>The wrong ‘un immediately rose and followed her.</p><p>Oh, no!</p><p>The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. He meant her some mischief! Of that, I was certain.</p><p>Maybe he would only steal her purse. But in a church? Surely not! The possibilities warred within me. Some thieves were desperate. Some had no regard for anything but their survival and their greed.</p><p>But was I tarring him unjustly? I couldn’t say, but I followed him as he followed her to the smallest of the side chapels, which was located beside an enormous flight of stairs cordoned off by ropes.</p><p>The old lady moved to the first of the short pews. The wrong ‘un closed in on her.</p><p>I was about to shout, to rush forward, to stop him from whatever trouble he had in mind, but I heard a noise behind me and did a sharp pivot.</p><p>And then, as they say in romantic novels (the kind I favour, the kind Holmes scoffs), my world went dark.</p><hr/><p>DONG! DONG! DONG!</p><p>I cannot express in words how I woke.</p><p>I woke to sound and vibration.</p><p>Only sound and vibration. Nothing else.</p><p>My scream of terror was a silent one, swallowed up by the noise, which crowded out all thought, all sanity.</p><p>I opened my eyes to the tongue of a bell beating against a copper side.</p><p>And then I saw the rim of another bell swinging towards my head.</p><p>I pinched my eyes shut and prayed.</p><p>And my prayers were answered by a pair of hands clapping me by the ankles and jerking me from where I lay.</p><p>I was thrown bodily across a pair of shoulders. I was carried down, down, down.</p><p>And the bells kept ringing.</p><p>I was dropped unceremoniously upon the foot of the stairs. I saw the cordon hanging loosely to one side. I could hear nothing but the bells. Whether they were still ringing above, I didn’t know. They were still ringing for me.</p><p>Holmes’s stricken face filled my field of vision.</p><p>‘Watson?!’ he mouthed, with a look of disbelieve on his face, which was very rare.</p><p>I could only shrug. ‘Old lady?’ I mouthed back. I didn’t know how to pantomime the rest of the story.</p><p>Holmes waved at the church behind him and then gestured to the side chapel. ‘Nobody!’ he replied. It might have been, ‘No body,’ too. I wasn’t certain.</p><p>I frowned. I shook my head. ‘How?’ I pointed to him and to the ground.</p><p>‘Sleuth,’ he said. He gave me an exasperated smile and touched his nose. ‘Home!’</p><p>I nodded.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Touch.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Holmes asks Watson to help on a case, and all is revealed.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to everyone who read and commented on this. I appreciate the support.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Holmes and I reached Baker Street, I was placed in a kind of house arrest. That is, Holmes insisted that I sleep beside him in his own bed.</p><p>After a brief protest, I relented.</p><p>It was no hardship to share a bed with Holmes. His body was warm and solid, and I curled into it without hesitation or embarrassment. The back of my head still hurt, of course, from the blow I’d received. The ringing in my ears had diminished, but I was still mostly deaf. I was also worried about the fate of the old lady.</p><p>Despite my anxieties and discomforts, I fell into a deep sleep. I enjoyed the pressure of Holmes’s lips on my forehead and his fingers caressing the side of my face, and sensing, if not exactly listening to, the beat of his heart.</p>
<hr/><p>As might be expected, Mrs. Hudson was not happy with me. The following morning, I bore her expressions of displeasure with contrite equanimity as she laid out breakfast. When she’d left, Holmes said,</p><p>“I’m going to have to bring this new case of mine to a head sooner than I thought, Watson, and I need your help, and, on a side note, I may be able, when everything is over, to put your mind at rest about the old lady in the church.”</p><p>I agreed wholeheartedly to this.</p><p>“I am going to leave you an address of a dressmaker’s shop. I want you to go there, with your Gladstone, at the hour I indicate. Your story is that you are picking up a parcel for your sister. I’ll leave you her name. There will, however, when you arrive be a medical emergency to which you will be asked to attend.”</p><p>“A diversion?”</p><p>“Precisely. Act as you normally would in your medical role.”</p><p>It seemed straightforward enough; although given my recent history, I did wonder what calamity would befall me when I ventured beyond the walls of 221B.</p>
<hr/><p>“I am picking up something for my sister, Miss Violet Mohels.”</p><p>“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the clerk behind the desk</p><p>“It’s Doctor,” I said gently and raised the Gladstone.</p><p>Her smile didn’t falter when she said, “Yes, Doctor.” She disappeared into the back of the shop.</p><p>After a minute, I heard a faint commotion, and the clerk came running back.</p><p>“Oh, Doctor?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“One of the ladies is taken suddenly ill! Could you come?”</p><p>“Certainly,” I said as the clerk unlatched the little gate and allowed me to pass.</p><p>I’d tasked the clerks and the proprietress of the shop with retrieving various items and was kneeling by a well-dressed obese woman who’d been stretched out upon a settee. She was gasping, but as my fingers went about their assessment, I noted something odd.</p><p>Her flesh wasn’t flesh.</p><p>It was evident to my touch, what would’ve undoubtedly escaped the notice of my eyes, that her bulk was not that amalgamation of human skin, muscle, fat, and bone, but rather false padding.</p><p>I looked into her eyes, her grey, cat-like eyes. Then I sat back on my heels. The lady sprang to her feet, showing a strength and a dexterity no one would’ve believed a female of that size to own. She flew to what I supposed a kind of changing booth, threw open the door, and, to the shrieks of everyone but me, removed one of the walls—</p><p>revealing a small man, crouching. I recognised him at once as the wrong ‘un from the church.</p><p>“Your blackmailing scheme is over, Curtis!” cried Holmes in a rather fetching dove-coloured suit and auburn curls, her long pearl necklace and matching drop earrings swinging in triumph.</p><p>Curtis tried to flee, but he never had a chance of making it past a wall of angry seamstresses wielding pinking shears. Or me.</p><p>Then I heard Lestrade’s voice from the front of the shop.</p>
<hr/><p>“It was you!” I cried over a late luncheon at Simpson’s. “I suppose I should say ‘They were you.’”</p><p>“Yes. They were all me,” admitted Holmes. “I’ve caused you no end of grief, Watson, and for that I am grievous sorry. One of Curtis’s blackmail victims came to me as a client, and through discussions, I discovered he had many more victims. I developed a suspicion that he was getting his information by lurking about fine dressmaker’s shops but it wasn’t always the same shop, so I briefly stumped. I finally tracked down the business that supplied notions, you know, buttons, ribbon, thread, etcetera, to shops where the victims frequented. And that’s how I came upon Curtis. I did a bit of reconnaissance, as the old lady you call ‘the queen bee’ and actually revealed, in the changing area, that I’d poisoned my late husband, a former Army surgeon who’d been invalided from Afghanistan, by the way, and thus became his new victim.”</p><p>I chuckled. “And the trip on the omnibus?”</p><p>“I saw you in the window as the ‘bus arrived and thought I’d play a little prank. I am sorry about the feather, Watson. I couldn’t bring myself to confess the truth when I learned how ill you’d been.”</p><p>I waved a dismissive hand. “And you were the lady in blue with the terrier?”</p><p>“I felt certain you recgonised me.”</p><p>I shrugged. “Perhaps subconsciously. You looked like a dream, Holmes.”</p><p>“I was tracking down Curtis’s route and anticipating where he would strike next, and, of course, it was a certain class of dressmaker, so I had to dress the part.”</p><p>I nodded.</p><p>“Crossing your path outside the chemist was pure chance. I was so angry. You told me that you’d stay home!”</p><p>I blushed, then retorted. “You squirted me with that foul stuff!”</p><p>“I was just looking for a way to distract you so I could escape! I had no notion you were allergic to hyacinth oil!”</p><p>“Frankly, I didn’t know either until that very moment.”</p><p>“I’d arranged, as the old lady, to meet Curtis and make my first payment…”</p><p>“At the church!”</p><p>“Yes. I pretended not to see his accomplice, Williams, cosh you on the head and carry you up the stairs. We did our business, then I hurriedly changed back into my regular clothes, in a confessional, I might add, and rescued you.”</p><p>“Just before I got my bell rung!”</p><p>“Just so. You are lucky that they were more greedy than violent, Curtis and Williams. They just wanted you out of the way, not dead, while they did their business with me. Thank you for your assistance today, Watson, and I am very sorry again for all the trouble I’ve caused you. I thought about confessing the whole scheme to you so many times, but in the end, it seemed more efficient just to wrap the whole affair up quickly. And, really, you are infernally stubborn about not staying put when you’re ill!”</p><p>I laughed. “Guilty. But it is a marvelous number of coincidences, too, Holmes. I suppose wherever you are, even if I don’t know where you are or who you are, I want to help you. I’m glad the finely dressed ladies of London can go about getting fitted for elegant frocks without worrying who is listening to their secrets, and I have to admit, I am glad to know that there is some rhyme and reason to these assaults on my sense. It was all a bit of muddled mystery, and I was beginning to feel a bit like Job!”</p><p>“Understandable,” said Holmes. “But now it’s over.”</p><p>“I just have one final question, Holmes.”</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>“The old lady in the church. Were those butterflies on your hat?”</p><p>“No,” said Holmes with a smile. “They were pink hydrangea.”</p><p>“I knew it!”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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